SUNS #5984 Monday 13 March 2006
SOUTH NORTH DEVELOPMENT MONITOR (SUNS)
published by Third World Network
SUNS #5984 Monday 13 March 2006
Thirty-six cases show growing bio-piracy in Africa
Kuala Lumpur, 10 Mar (Chee Yoke Heong) -- A recent report detailing 36 cases
of bio-piracy in Africa has been creating ripples at international meetings
negotiating a fair deal for developing countries to benefit from their
genetic resources and traditional knowledge.
The report, entitled "Out of Africa: Mysteries of Access and Benefit
Sharing" (available at ), provides 36 brief
case studies of medicines, cosmetics and agricultural products that
originate from bio-diversity (including plants, marine life and microbes) in
African countries and that have been patented by multinational companies
without there being evidence of benefits accruing to the countries of
origin.
Published by the US-based Edmonds Institute with the collaboration of the
African Centre for Bio-safety based in South Africa, the report was released
at a meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) which discussed
international rules to regulate bio-prospecting and ensure fair and
equitable benefits to countries and communities that provide biological
resources and associated traditional knowledge.
The report made a strong impact on delegates at the 4th Meeting of the
Working Group on Access and Benefit Sharing in Granada in January that was
negotiating an international regime.
It was also referred to by some delegations (Kenya and Sri Lanka) as
evidence that bio-piracy is rampant and on-going during a World Trade
Organisation meeting in February on the relationship between the WTO's TRIPS
agreement and the CBD's access and benefit sharing principles.
The biological resources concerned are for medicinal, agricultural,
horticultural and cosmetics uses. In most cases there are no evidence or
even information of benefit sharing agreements. Some of the patents claimed
also appear highly questionable. Thus, the report calls for each case to be
further investigated and in greater detail. (See below for examples of the
cases.)
The report's author, Jay McGown, says in the introduction: "It's a
free-for-all out there, and until the parties to the CBD solve the problems
of access and benefit sharing, the robbery will continue. They've got to
declare a moratorium on access until a just protocol is finished and
implemented.
"Until then, the bio-pirates will keep on shouting in the ears of their
victims, There's no such thing as piracy! And at the rate discussions are
going, the bio-pirates may access everything before an agreement is
finalised. If that happens there really will be no such thing as piracy.
There will only be patent and trade secret transgression."
Mariam Mayet, Executive Director of the African Centre for Bio-safety,
speaking at a panel discussion during the CBD meeting, said: "In just one
month of searches of various databases including the website of the US
Patent and Trademark Office, we discovered these cases across the African
continent. It was a shock to see the number of patents given or being
claimed."
Co-panelist Dr. Ossama El Tayeb, head of the Egyptian delegation at the
meeting, called the report the tip of an iceberg. There were five possible
cases of bio-piracy involving Egypt in the report. Reports such as this
emphasised the urgency for a legally binding global treaty to prevent
bio-piracy.
Dr. Ossama pointed out that from the list of the report's cases, it was
clear that derivatives of biological resources were very much the target of
bio-prospecting for commercial value, and this is why the international
regime must include derivatives.
[Developed countries and their pharmaceutical, agriculture and biotechnology
industries are very strongly against the inclusion of derivatives in the
scope of the international regime.]
Edmonds Institute President, Beth Burrows, described the report as "a litany
of cases of suspicious bio-diversity acquisition." She said the author spent
only a month to find the many cases through databases available on the
internet. The report also indicates potential contacts in each case, for
verifying, clarifying and extending what has been found.
"Bio-piracy", according to the publishers, is a term that refers to "the
acquisition of bio-diversity, i. e., biological material (plants, animals,
microorganism, and their parts), or of traditional knowledge related to that
bio-diversity, without the prior informed consent of those whose
bio-diversity or traditional knowledge has been taken."
One of the best known and most recent cases of bio-piracy involves Hoodia,
an appetite suppressant that capitalized on the traditional knowledge of the
indigenous San people in South Africa.
Developed and patented by the South African Council for Scientific and
Industrial Research (CSIR), exclusive rights were sold to a British company.
It was only after worldwide outcry that a minuscule percentage of the
royalties were made available to the San in the form of a trust. The Hoodia
case is still cited as an example of inadequate benefit sharing and
questionable prior informed consent.
Mariam Mayet said: "When you look at what has been taken in the recent past
from African countries, it runs the gamut from bio-diversity used for
medicine to bio-diversity used for agriculture, horticulture, cosmetics, and
industrial purposes. It's unbelievable how much has been taken without a
public accounting and without any permission from the communities and
peoples involved".
"There's a huge amount to be accounted for," Burrows noted. "It's not easy
to prove bio-piracy. Where contracts are not published and national rules of
access and benefit sharing may not exist or are not attended to by
bio-prospectors, or the companies and institutions they represent, it is
difficult to verify claims of theft, even when you catch the thieves with
the booty in hand, or in their patent portfolios."
Mayet added: "For access and benefit sharing to work, according to the
vision of the CBD, one should be able to verify that in each instance of
use, particularly where bio-diversity and/or its derivatives have been
patented, the whole process began in prior informed consent and a benefit
sharing agreement from the people whose bio-diversity has been accessed."
Although the CBD addressed the terms and conditions for access to genetic
resources and benefit-sharing in the original treaty that came into force in
1993, it was not until 1999 that efforts were made to operationalize the
treaty's provisions. The process was taken forward in negotiations at the
2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development, held in Johannesburg, and
continued at the 4th Meeting of the ABS Working Group held in Granada, Spain
in January 2006. It will also figure at the Conference of Parties of the CBD
to be held in Curitiba (Brazil) next week.
The developing countries are also bringing up the bio-piracy issue in two
other key fora: the WTO (where they are asking that the TRIPS Agreement be
amended to require disclosure of the origin of genetic resources and
evidence of consent and benefit sharing) and at the WIPO (where they are
asking that the issue be included in the negotiations on a substantive
patent law treaty).
In all the fora (CBD, WTO, and WIPO), many developing countries have been
advocating legally binding global rules and measures to prevent or punish
bio-piracy, but they face strong resistance from most developed countries.
The following is a selection of 11 cases from the 36 cases in the Edmonds
Institute report on bio-piracy in Africa:
-- Diabetes drug produced by a microbe from Kenya: Acarbose is a drug taken
by Type II diabetics. The German company Bayer filed a patent on a new way
to manufacture the product. According to the 1995 application, a
actinoplanes sp. bacteria strain called SE50 has unique genes enabling the
biosynthesis of acarbose in fermentors and the strain comes from Kenya's
Lake Ruiru. The author found no evidence of benefit sharing of this valuable
microbe.
-- Extracts from a medicinal plant Artemista judaica from Libya, Egypt and
other North African countries for the treatment of diabetes was patented by
a UK company, Phytopharm Plc. It admits that the plant has been used in
Libyan traditional medicine for the treatment of diabetes. However, despite
the explicit declaration of a lack of novelty, the US Patent Office has
granted the patent. The author said he could not find a company intellectual
property policy on the traditional knowledge it patents nor any evidence of
a benefit sharing agreement related to this patent.
-- Antibiotics from a termite hill found in Gambia: In the 1970s, rapamycin,
an immunosuppressive drug that is used in medicine (for example, to prevent
rejection of organ transplant) was discovered from a Streptomyces sample
collected in Easter Island. The discovery of rapamycin sparked a search for
other Streptomyces that produce similar compounds. SmithKline Beecham (now
Glaxo SmithKline) has claimed a compound from a Streptomyces strain that it
says was isolated from a termite hill at Abuke, Gambia. The strain produces
a rapamycin-related compound called 29-desmethylrapamycin and, according to
the patent, it is useful both as an anti-fungal and as an immunosuppressant.
However, no information was found about any benefit sharing arrangements
between the company and Gambia.
-- Four multipurpose medicinal plants that were obtained from Ethiopia and
neighbouring countries: A researcher in Tennessee has obtained a US patent
on four African medicinal plants. The patent makes sweeping claims for
preparations of the plant extracts and against "breast cancer, leukemia,
melanoma and myeloma" and "viral infection, diabetes, Parkinson's disease,
tuberculosis, or fungal infections." The patent covers use of Millettia
ferruginea alone or with one or more of the three other medicinal plants
that are claimed - Glinus lotoides, Ruta chalepensis and Hagenia abyssinica.
All of the plants grow in Ethiopia and have medicinal uses there, as well as
in some other countries. Despite the patent, little appears new about the
medicinal uses claimed for these plants. The author could not find any
benefit-sharing agreement.
-- Drug addiction treatment from Iboga plant that has long been used in
Central and West Africa: In low doses, it serves as a stimulant to maintain
alertness, for example, while hunting. In larger does, it is a hallucinogen,
traditionally used for religious purposes. But in recent years, it has drawn
the interest of drug-addiction researchers, as Iboga reportedly has the
effect of ending cravings for addictive substances, such as heroin and
nicotine. There is thus great interest in Iboga to cure some drug
addictions. Numerous patents have been taken out on Iboga, but the author
could not find any evidence of benefit sharing related to Iboga.
-- Multipurpose Kombo butter derived from Central and West Africa: Kombo
butter, an extract of the African nutmeg (Pycnanthus angolensis), has been
used in Europe and North America since at least the 1970s, when it was
identified as the source of cetyl myristoleate, a 'dietary supplement' used
to treat arthritis. The plant is native to Central Africa. As a
vegetable-derived fatty acid, it is suitable for personal care products and
because it is of plant origin, it can be used in products that are Kosher,
Halal and 'non animal'. As a result, a wave of intellectual property claims
is being made on Kombo butter. Although African exporters are presumably
being paid as suppliers of raw or semi-possessed Kombo butter, there was no
evidence of any benefit sharing agreement related to use of Pycnanthus
angolensis as a genetic resource.
-- Groundnuts from Malawi: The University of Florida has filed for plant
breeders' rights on eight varieties of groundnuts since 2000. One of those
varieties, called C-99R, is a 'runner' type. The University of Florida has
licensed C-99R to the Golden Peanut Company, a peanut processor with
operations in major peanut-producing areas in the US and Argentina. C-99R
has important African origins. Plant variety registration materials make
clear that one of C-99R's major and direct parents comes from the USDA's
plant collection (PI 259785) from Malawi. PI 259785 was collected in 1959
and the Malawian variety bears important disease resistance characteristics
that are present in C-99R. The author found no evidence of benefit-sharing
with Malawi.
-- Ocean resources from African countries: Since the entry into force of the
CBD, patenting of marine resources (such as sponge extracts from Cape Verde,
Kenya, Eritrea, Seychelles and South Africa; sea hare extracts from
Mauritius; and tunicate extracts from Comoros) has been on the rise.
However, there are as yet no clear rules governing deep sea bio-prospecting.
The author, however, could not find a benefit sharing agreement related to
any of these patents. If there are agreements, their terms appear to be
private.
-- The cancer fighting agent of Bitterleaf from sub-Saharan Africa: A
scientist at Jackson State University in the US obtained a US patent in 2005
on extracts of Vernonia amygdalina, an African medicinal plant called
Bitterleaf which is native to most of sub-Saharan Africa and is used in many
countries. According to the patent, the extracts are effective against
cancer. The inventor obtained samples in Benin City, Nigeria. Questions
arise as to whether the invention is new and if benefits derived from its
use will be shared.
-- Infection-fighting mycobacteria from Uganda: A mycobacteria collected in
Uganda in the 1970s has been patented at least five times in the US. It
covers use of a Mycobacterium vaccae called R877R, against chronic viral
infections, including HIV. According to the patent, R877R was originally
isolated from mud samples collected in Central Uganda. The owner is a
British company, SR Pharma, Plc. SR Pharma's website indicates that more
R877R patents and commercialization may be coming soon but there is no
mention of benefit sharing.
-- Cosmetics from the baobab tree: The baobab tree, which has great cultural
symbolism, grows in much of Africa. The German company Cognis has obtained
patents in many countries (starting with France in 1997) for use of baobab
leaf extracts in cosmetic products. Cognis' 'invention' is to use the baobab
leaf mucilage as a soothing cream. But baobab has a wide variety of
traditional medicinal and other uses in Africa, including use of the leaves
and its use on the skin. Therefore, it seems most unlikely that Cognis was
the first to discover the soothing effects of baobab mucilage when applied
to the human body. +
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